We think the Vancouver Canucks may have a scouting problem(!!!!)

I was recently having a Twitter discussion with Canucks Army contributor Patrick Johnston (@risingaction) and regular reader Ryan (@Verviticus), in which we were essentially arguing which Canucks entry draft in the Ron Delorme Era was the worst (it’s probably 2007, although 2002, 2000, and 2009 are all pretty miserable too).

We came to the conclusion that, man, Vancouver’s drafting really has been inexcusably awful for over a decade now. Sure, there have been a handful of home runs with guys like Alex Edler, Kevin Bieksa, and Ryan Kesler, but nearly every Canucks fan can name The One That Got Away or That Guy They #ShouldOf Drafted. Still, every team in the NHL passed up Shea Weber or Patrice Bergeron or Milan Lucic, so is Ron Delorme’s record as head of Canucks amateur scouting really that much worse than everyone else?

To find out, I decided to design an extremely basic you-don’t-have-to-even-think method of drafting and compared it to Vancouver’s draft record under Delorme. I’ve put a summer intern with nothing but a book of CHL stats and no access to any non-Canadian junior league up against an entire team of world-travelling, game-watching professional amateur scouts. If the Canucks’ brass can’t clear this woefully low hurdle, then holy hell they are awful.

Spoiler: it’s even worse than you think.

The Method

The Pension Plan Puppets have a running gag over on their blog about whether Dave Nonis (or Brian Burke or whoever the hell runs the Leafs these days. Shanahan? Lieweke? Carlyle? It’s hard to keep track!) can out-GM a potato. They outline a set of rules that the potato has to abide by and compare the teams’ theoretical moves under the leadership of a potato to those made by the actual team. An excerpt from this past summer:

“Dave Nonis and Randy Carlyle made some controversial moves yesterday, so to figure out whether the duo deserves accolades or scorn, I thought I would compare Nonis’ July 5th Leafs roster to a potato’s.

Rules: The potato cannot extend the Leafs’ UFAs, nor can it sign new ones. We will consider Colton Orr’s extension a “July 5th” move. It will not undo trades, so Bolland and Bernier are still on the roster. Lastly, the potato must re-sign RFAs at 200% of their previous AAV – it’s a potato, not a skilled negotiator. So how did our two GMs fare?”

Anyways, to avoid totally ripping off PPP’s shtick, we’ll say our sole amateur scout is the only thing more useless to a hockey game than a potato: Tom Sesti–

–I mean, uh, we’ll say our scout is a summer intern called “Sham Sharron“. Sham will not pick and choose his draft selections. He has no access to game tape, he has seen no games, and he has no fancy stats or analytics to aid his decision. He will select all players by the following rules:

All players selected will be from the Canadian Hockey League.

Goalies are voodoo, they will not be selected at any time.

Defensemen are voodoo, they will not be selected at any time.

The Canucks’ selection will be the player still on the draft board that scored the most points in their 17 year old CHL season that was for-realsies taken between Vancouver’s selection and Vancouver’s subsequent selection.

No other information other than the total number of points a player had in his 17-year old season (his first year of draft eligibility) is considered. This information was freely available at the time each draft was held.

Ties are broken on the basis of points per game.

Starting with the 2000 NHL entry draft, here’s how Ron Delorme and his crew got their asses handed to them by Fake Intern Sham Sharron:

2000

2001

Vancouver did well in 2001, finding two impact pros in Kevin Bieksa and R.J. Umberger. However, Sham managed to find future 3-time 30-goal scorer Jason Pominville to compliment the Sedins and Kyle Wellwood and P-A Parenteau to supplement Vancouver’s depth. As we’ll see though, Wellwood is eventually forced out of Vancouver’s system by some even better talent at C. I’m Gladskikh the Canucks avoided that awkward situation..

2002

’02 was a disaster for Vancouver, as they failed to find a single NHLer with their 11 selections. Sham whiffs on the majority of his picks too, but unearths Matt Stajan in the late 2nd round and Max Talbot in the 7th.

As an aside, this was my absolute favourite thing I discovered while doing this project: the guy Vancouver actually drafted in the 7th round, 214th overall, was a guy by the name of Marc-Andre Roy. You’ll notice that he played 58 games in his draft year, had no goals, and just one assist. So why did Brian Burke’s Vancouver Canucks waste a pick on that coke machine? I bet it had something to do with this:

Yes, those are SIX HUNDRED AND FIFTY THREE minutes in penalties in just 68 games. According to Hockeyfights.com, Roy had 41 fighting majors that year, which account for a total of 205 of those penalty minutes. I don’t know how one accrues 448 extra PIMs without fighting, but I assume it involves criminal activity, human sacrifice, and satanic worship at centre ice.

Thing is, Roy wasn’t the only super-ultra-mega goon roaming the QMJHL back then. I came across quite a few guys with massive PIM totals running through this study. I don’t know much about Q hockey in the early 2000’s, but I have to assume it was a total gong show.

2003

The 2003 draft is legendary for the sheer number of quality picks that the first and second rounds produced. However, it wasn’t a really deep draft as the number of late round successes were kind of limited. Sham misses Ryan Kesler here, but picks up future ex-Flyers captain Mike Richards, as well as Clarke MacArthur. Under Sham’s drafting, Brad Richardson also starts his Vancouver Canuck tenure a decade sooner than he would in real life.

2004

The 2004 draft is probably the crown jewel of the Delorme Era. Vancouver’s gamble on a goalie in the first round paid off, and Delorme and Co. also discovered future NHL regulars Alex Edler, Jannik Hansen, and Mike Brown. Sham takes Brandon Dubinsky over Cory Schneider and Liam Reddox (who somehow managed to sneak in 100 career NHL games…?) instead of Edler, but almost had Kris Versteeg in the 4th round instead of Peter Pohl. Versteeg has 49 points to Pohl’s 50, but did so in fewer games. If Sham was allowed to use points per game, he does not pass up Versteeg. But alas, Sham is not allowed to think, so we’re left to wonder what could have been. A MacArthur-Dubinsky-Versteeg 3rd line in 2011? That would have been something.

2005

I never like bringing up 2005 because of the circumstances surrounding the Luc Bourdon selection. Looking back though, I was pretty stoked about him, but disappointed that Vancouver passed on the great big goofy looking guy with the funny name from the country that no one had ever heard of. I have an Anze Kopitar Kings jersey, and I get filled with regret looking at it knowing that Vancouver was this close to drafting the guy I’d decided was going to be one of my favourite players.

Granted, Sham whiffs on Kopitar too and takes Marek Freaking Zagrapan 10th overall. What the hell, Sham. You were awful in 2005. Next year, take a GOOD OL’ CANADIAN BOY in the first round instead.

2006

Claude Giroux.

Ron Delorme and Co. cost Vancouver Claude Giroux.

I mean, this would make foregoing the 2004 haul worth it on its own.

The obvious, unthinking choice in 2006 was Claude Giroux at 14th overall. And they still screwed it up.

2007

2007 was the trainwreck year. Not a single player drafted by the Canucks even made the American Hockey League, let alone coming close to sniffing the NHL. Unfortunately, Sham is unable to make anything from this mess either. Just to prove he’s not infallible, Sham also passes on dynamic Lewiston MAINEiacs sniper David Perron, but in favour of Brett MacLean instead of Patrick White. Eugh.

At least MacLean had played 18 more NHL games than Vancouver’s entire actual 2007 draft class.

2008

In his first draft under Sham Sharron’s guidance, Mike Gillis saves himself a lot of grief and selects Tyler Ennis 10th overall. He’ll fit right in on the second line with Claude Giroux and Jason Pominville. Or maybe he’ll take Justin Williams’ spot on line 1 with the Sedins. Or maybe he’ll fill a checking role in place of one of the MacArthur-Richards-Burrows line. Or maybe he can just tear up the AHL with Mathieu Perreault since we already have Matt Stajan, Brandon Dubinsky and Max Talbot on line 4… *sobs uncontrollably*

2009

Neither Sham nor Delorme have a banner year. Sham misses Ryan O’Reilly by one point, but Taylor Beck, Linden Vey, and Phil Varone all go on to form a very strong core of a good AHL team. By the time 2013-2014 rolls around, all are nearing NHL readiness scoring nearly a point-per-game in the AHL, but are being held back because of Vancouver’s absurd depth at forward.

2010

Despite no draft picks until the 4th round, Sham finds Brendan Gallagher and this is just getting silly. Vancouver has 4 first lines and probably multiple Stanley Cups at this point and Sham is hailed as the greatest hockey mind to ever live. We erect a statue in his honour for finally drafting MOAR GIANTZZZ.

2011

We’re getting into “too early to call who’s better” territory now. Basically everyone in these two drafts is still a prospect. That being said, I’d take Sham’s top-3 picks over Vancouver’s because Prince, Catenacci, and Pageau probably have a better shot of one of them developing into an above-average NHL player than Jensen, Honzik, and Grenier do. But hey, you never know. Also, Sham allows Vancouver to benefit from Ondrej Palat’s extremely fluky development which is just gravy at this point.

2012

This is Ron Delorme’s final year as the director of amateur scouting for the Vancouver Canucks, and it’s too soon to tell if he’s defeated Sham in his last hurrah. I tend to think not, because I prefer Bozon, Gordon, and Smith to Mallet, Hutton, and Myron, but Ben Hutton looks like he could swing that in Delorme’s favour.

With his stellar draft record, Sham is retained as the Canucks’ head of amateur scouting and is allowed the 2013 NHL entry draft as well.

2013

I prefer Mantha to Horvat despite the age concerns, and I like Bjorkstrand far more than Cassels, but I’m torn on Petan/Shinkaruk. Greg Chase could prove to be a good pick in round 6, so I give the early nod to Sham’s most recent draft over the Canucks’ actual one, but that’s open for plenty of debate, especially if Bo Horvat does defy the odds and become a Bergeron-type two-way force at the NHL level. As each and every one of you knows, I’m skeptical though.

Conclusion

So who did better, Vancouver’s actual scouting staff or our friend Sham who restricted himself to just one year of goal data in just the CHL and watched exactly none of the games? Well, here are all the guys who have played one or more full seasons worth of games drafted by each group:

If Vancouver never kept a single amateur scout on staff, never paid any attention to junior hockey anywhere in the world, never watched a single game, never did any in-depth research, never prepared for the draft for more than three hours each year, and simply took the next highest scoring CHL forward with every selection they had, they would have drafted over 4000 more games of future NHL experience, nearly 1000 more goals, and over 1500 more assists than they did under the Ron Delorme regime. Vancouver’s scouting since 2000 has not just been useless, it’s been a cataclysmic failure on all fronts, and probably the single largest reason why the Canucks have not been able to accrue enough assets to build a perennial Stanley Cup contender.

This study was hardly in-depth. The methods for selecting players were extremely straightforward and comically simplistic. No shred of information that wasn’t already available at the time was used. There were still massive whiffs under this system. Good players were still passed up and first-round busts were still selected. Yet it outperformed the actual Canucks draft record to a degree that shouldn’t be possible, both in terms of player quality and player quantity.

The knowledge and opinions of a scout are only worthwhile if they can outperform any idiot with access to the internet. Vancouver has proven definitively that their scouts have been entirely worthless since Ron Delorme took over the gig in 2000, since they haven’t been able to outperform what an idiot with the internet would have done. You, reader, could have done the job better than the professionals. It’s now up to the professionals to figure out how to get their competitive edge back.

That would certainly improve this along with, for example, taking the junior goalie with the best save percentage or something along those lines when the Canucks selected a goalie.

If Rhys is up for it, a better way to do this would be to tweak the criteria to include defenseman and goalie selections and to run the simulator where ALL 29 teams are following the same rules.

As an example, the simulator suggests the Canucks should have selected Giroux at #14 whereas he was actually selected at #22 by the Flyers.

This implies that EVERY team from, at minimum, 14-21 should have taken Giroux.

Without looking it up, there may have been a team or multiple teams selecting from 1-13 that also should have taken Giroux following this methodology.

Hence, if other teams were privy to the Sham playbook things would look A LOT different.

Not to mention that Don Cherry would love the new look of the league since he and Sham both want to completely ignore the talent coming out of Europe…

As a commenter suggested above, I’d also like to see the simulator at the 1998 draft where the Canucks would pass on the Sedins.

Let’s see how Sham’s core stacks up to the one that was a contender from 2008-2012 largely on the strengths of Sedin, Sedin, Kesler, Raymond, Hansen, Bieksa, Edler, Schneider and could have been even more homegrown players if it had included Grabner, Umberger, Bourdon (RIP), Allen, Cooke etc.

Ripping the Canucks without looking at what 29 other teams have done (or should have done) is not going to help dispel the notion that lower mainland hockey fans live in a bubble…

Detroit and the 29 other franchises in the NHL would laugh at this idea because, for all intents and purposes, Sham is cutting himself off from over 50% of the talent pool (defenseman, goalies and Euro forwards).

It’s because they draft for coal and polish them into diamonds. teams like the Canucks draft like a candy store. Oh I’ll take that one and everything is done. It’s not. Learn how to develop players or don’t bother drafting them. Drafting means to just picking something up, not developing what you’ve just picked up.

This method of drafting got me excited…until I realized that it wouldn’t work at all in real life.

The problem lies in number 4 of “Sham”‘s method: “The Canucks’ selection will be the player still on the draft board that scored the most points in their 17 year old CHL season that was for-realsies taken between Vancouver’s selection and Vancouver’s subsequent selection.”

The problem is that it presumes to know who’s going to be drafted in the near-future. Let’s pretend that you had no way of knowing who the other teams were planning on taking (which would actually be the case in reality).

In 2000, the Canucks would have passed on Justin Williams to take Ramzi Abid. Even their own NINTH-round pick, Tim Smith, put up more points than Justin Williams. So the question is: Why did the LA Kings pass on Ramzi Abid and Tim Smith to pick up Justin Williams? Answer me that, Sham.

Also, let’s not overlook the fact that we wouldn’t have the Sedins if this method were used. Assuming that Burke would have traded for the 2nd and 3rd picks even if he hadn’t intended on drafting the twins (he wouldn’t have), he would have used those picks on Pavel Brendl and Oleg Saprykin (or James Desmarais if he didn’t have the benefit of foresight).

Sorry, but the Canucks would have drafted much worse if you tried to use this method (even under the assumption that all players would have developed as they actually did).

Sham could simply add NHL central scouting rankings to his method. What changes if Sham chooses from the next 30 players (or number of players between subsequent Canucks picks) on NHL central scouting’s list instead of using the “for realsies” clause?

I think the point of this exercise is that anyone with access to the internet and without having seen even one game could draft better than the Canucks scouts, and I think that point is well made. The reality is that the Delorme and co. seem to take an almost random approach to drafting. Even a completely unsophisticated and arbitrary methodology like above would have resulted in SIGNIFICANTLY improved drafting for the Canucks over the last decade. This is an absolutely sad indictment of the Canucks current scouting methods, and the state of scouting in general. It reminds me of that opening scene in Moneyball where all the scouts are sitting around talking about prospects, making statements like “He’s got a beautiful swing” and “he’s got a baseball body”. This sounds essentially like how the Canucks draft players. They would have been better off firing their entire scouting staff and just having a computer draft for them.

I hope for the Canucks sake that both Linden and Benning get a hold of this article.

Linden and Benning have the sixth overall pick in the 2014 draft. If they follow this methodology, who will they pick?

Should they draft the highest-scoring available forward from the CHL? Not according to this article. According to this article, they should draft the highest-scoring available forward from those who are drafted between 6th and 35th overall. But how are they going to do that, when they have no idea who will be drafted between 6th and 35th, because they haven’t been drafted yet?!

Do you see how this “methodology” only works when you’re looking back on it, in hindsight, retroactively?

Look at the 2000 Entry Draft. The Canucks would’ve drafted Justin Williams in the 1st round, then Ramzi Abid in the 2nd round. But look at their stats: Ramzi Abid had MORE points than Justin Williams.

In 2003, Nigel Dawes had MORE points than Mike Richards.

So no, they aren’t just picking whoever had the most points. They’re picking whoever had the most points AMONG THOSE who were drafted shortly afterwards. But in real life, there’s no way to predict who’s going to be drafted shortly afterwards. Therefore, a hindsight bias is necessary.

This article is so cringe-worthy. And for those quibbling with the comical methodology, feel free to simply look at the draft picks in each year of the past decade of futility. My apologies if this has already been added to the discussion and I’ve missed it, but it really adds an exclamation point: http://thepensblog.com/2014-archives/shero-draft-piece.html

Although it focuses on Pittsburgh’s terrible drafting since 2006, the league-wide comparisons mostly have Vancouver at the bottom by a large margin. It’s pretty depressing, actually.

I’m curious as to how you gathered the CHL statistical data for each 17 year-old. I spent an hour trying to find a site or source that offered this information up in a way that was easily gathered. I’d like to see these results for other teams as well.

I hope that the comparison list – sham vs. Delorme – was sent to Trevor Linden, and will be sent to new GM Jim Benning. Linden has already publicly defended Delorme, so it looks like ‘the old boy’s network’ will still be the norm in Vancouver.

Trevor please get rid of Ron Delorme .Mike Kenaan
had a better track record ,he traded you for Todd Burtuzzi , Brian Mcabe , 2nd rounder Jarrko Ruttu, pretty good trade at the time.I know you should have never been traded but a really good deal…

Too funny. Last year I started (but stopped) trying to figure out how the Nucks scouts would stack up against simply taking central scouting’s next best available player when it was their turn to pick. Wonder if it would have been better or worse than this system. Funny thing is, Canucks brass should not need these kinds of facts to figure this out cause it’s kinda obvious.

I just discovered another problem: some of the posted statistics above are just plain wrong.

For example, it says that Justin Williams scored 83 points when he was 17-years-old. That’s a lie. He was born in October 1981, and was therefore 17 during the 1998-99 season when he only scored 12 points in 47 games.

I don’t think you guys are understanding what Sham did. He’s not picking what other teams pick after him… He’s picking the highest scoring person available at the time! That’s why some of Sham’s picks were the same as Delorme’s. He’s not picking future picks lmao!

Great humor, great writing, great article! I’ll definitely be coming back to the site.

Do it again but only pick forwards at the draft positions the Canucks drafted a forward. Can’t compare the two lists when your intern had double the picks to find success. Throw out Dubinsky, Stajan, Talbot, and half the guys at the end of your list and suddenly your argument holds no water. Especially the total numbers when one list has twice as many names as the other. Give me a break.